Paula Hildebrandt, Welcome City Group, 2016, Hamburg

 

To research possibilities, conditions and ways of arriving in a new city, Paula Hildebrandt founded the Welcome City Group. Newcomers and inhabitants, citizens and non-citizens met and assembled for different occasions and activities at different places within the urban space in Hamburg. The Welcome City Group provided a label and at the same time the frame for an Improbable Assembly of different people to explore their rights and responsibilities, the current conditions of arriving and joining a group or becoming a citizen: How to perform on the stage of the big city? What are the secret, mostly unspoken rules for living, visiting and settling in a new city: the rules you are supposed to know or which you did not even know existed? The group has appeared, inter alia, as a hen night in St. Pauli, as shopping kings and queens on Jungfernstieg, on the outdoor fitness trail around the Alster and during the official Night of Knowledge.

 

Researcher: Paula Hildebrandt

Co-researchers: Roy Avishek, Elnaz Attar, Jamal Jafapour, Wissam Borghol, Thorsten Gleibs, Michael Thomas, Saaibul Haq, Shukuria Popal Zakerwal, Alima Ouedraogo, Noshank Hajo, Fardin Heidary, Reshad Samimi, Gabriele von Stritzky, Rolan Maldybaev, Semira, Karam Khoudari, Emad Eddin Elewi, Amer Iskef, Mahmood Zako, Mulugeta Andersen, Yonas Meroner, Awni Salayameh, Boyuan Liang, Christine Hentschel, Esther Ruelfs, Klaus Lübke, Anselm Sprandel, Christine Müller, Micha Bonk, Claudia Plöchinger, Uschi Hoffmann, Christoph Twickel, Rhea Hoff, David Krause, Ergün (Güselkent e.V.), Daniel Boese, LaToya Manly-Spain, Yolanda, and many more

Participants: Citizens and non-citizens of Hamburg

Formats: Improbable Assembly, Intervention into the Real, Try-out Institution